tabs

Friday, 20 April 2012

All Kinds of Things

I had my first solo exhibition, AfterColour, on March 15th 2012 at Medulla Art Gallery in Woodbrook, Trinidad. It was all I could have hoped for and went quite well.

I didn't have a formal or informal acknowledgement of all the help I would have had putting this together so I'd like to now thank a few people for various reasons: Richard Taylor, Robert Young, Ashraph, Lupe Leonard [plenty, plenty love], Sean Leonard, Richard Rawlins, Arnaldo James, Baidawi, James Hackett, QD Ross and Rodell Warner. My family - my sisters, of course, ever the safe zone and the ones who make sure I don't look unpresentable on these occasions. Without them, I would have looked a hot mess.

I must also thank the gallery and curators Martin Mouttet and Geoffrey McLean for their support. It truly was an overwhelming experience.

For AfterColour, I chose to communicate via 4 different types of work - CC: Everybody which is a joint project between Rodell Warner and myself, Look In, which are new mixed media works in watercolour and lino print, Playing Dolly House, handsewn fabric dolls which I started in 2011, and Colour(ed)s, also new work and the starting point for the show. Colour(ed)s is a series of hand sewn fabric collages standing about 40 inches high.

Here are some photos from the show, a video and some press coverage in which I am much more eloquent than I am right now:

4 comments:

The idea that value, hope and dream is associated with white and/or light skin is extremely detrimental to our society and to black women. bell hooks states,'as a group, black women are in an unusual position in this society,for not only are we collectively at the bottom of the occupational ladder, but our overall social status is lower than that of any other group.' This skin lightening cream that you talk of in the above video, in my opinion, is evident of this. The overall message in this skin lightening cream is that Black women are not desired and therefore not beautiful. In order for us to be beautiful we have to lightening our skin. It is so disappointing and detrimental to the self-esteem and self-confidence of girls and women who don't see the value in the dark/brown skin that God has given them. We have such a long way. Despite all this, I have renewed hope in the work that continues to be done (like yours) that counter that argument and message, because dark/brown girls are BEAUTIFUL!